Jewish Affairs

Polish President Andrzej Duda recently delivered a candid speech to mark the 50th anniversary of the antisemitic campaign launched by the then Communist regime under the guise of anti-Zionism. As a result of the calumnies levelled against Polish Jewish citizens, the vast majority of whom were highly assimilated, 13,000 or more Jews fled into exile, […]

The horrible things my eyes have seen are indescribable,” Marcel Nadjari, an Auschwitz-Birkenau prisoner, wrote in 1944. Nadjari, a Greek Jew, was a member of the Sonderkommando, a squad of inmates charged with the grisly, inhumane task of herding newly-arrived Jews into the gas chamber, extracting valuables from their corpses, removing their bodies and placing them […]

Sad to say, Poland has been deluged by an outpouring of nasty rhetoric with antisemitic overtones. It has surfaced since the passage this month of controversial legislation which criminalizes the accusation that the “Polish nation” was complicit in the Holocaust and which outlaws the erroneous phrase “Polish death camp.” These malicious expressions were swiftly and […]

A new kind of insidious antisemitism, far different than the familiar variety of old, has emerged as hopes for resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict have been dashed by realities on the ground. Responding to President Donald Trump’s recent decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, pro-Palestinian youths went on a rampage in three European cities, erasing […]

The Holocaust unfolded in a succession of Nazi-occupied countries ranging from Poland and the Soviet Union to France and Hungary, and although much is known about this catastrophe 72 years after the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp by the Red Army, a whole lot of new material is still turning up and enlarging our […]

Regrettably, Poland continues to drag its feet concerning a problem that should have been resolved years ago. To this day, Poland is still the only major European country that has not passed comprehensive legislation for the restitution of property seized by the Nazis during the German occupation and nationalized by the Communist regime after 1945, according […]

In 1975, when Toronto was still considered by some as something of a culinary backwater, I began writing a series of stories about Jewish delicatessens and restaurants in the city for a Canadian Jewish newspaper. My first story was illustrated by a photograph of yours truly sitting contentedly in front of a pastrami sandwich and […]

When I last visited the sprawling site of the former Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, I knew I had seen one of the most diabolical and depraved places on the planet. The bleak barracks, the barbed wire fences, the guard posts, the gas chambers and the ruins of crematoria reminded me of the lengths Nazi Germany went […]

In a courageous and searingly candid acknowledgment of France’s complicity in the Holocaust, President Emmanuel Macron said yesterday that France had played a central role in one of its darkest chapters. Commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Velodrome d’Hiver (Vel d’hiv) roundup of Jews in Paris in the summer of 1942, and speaking in the […]

Simone Veil, one of the greatest figures in modern France, died recently in Paris at the age of 89. Some years ago, I had the good fortune of interviewing her. This is what I wrote: There is no other political figure in Europe like Simone Veil. One of France’s first female cabinet ministers, and the […]

Sheldon Kirshner, a journalist living in Toronto, has freelanced for various publications in Canada and abroad. He holds a BA degree in European history from Concordia University in Montreal and... Read More

Subscribe

Enter your email address below to receive updates each time we publish new content.